Forbes columnist Steven Salzberg and author-investigator Joe Nickell will each be awarded the 2012 Robert P. Balles Prize in Critical Thinking, to be presented by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry at the CFI Summit in October.

Swedenborg and Dr. Oz

It
is not widely known that Oz has been profoundly influenced by Emanuel
Swedenborg, a Swedish Protestant fundamentalist who, late in life, became
a spiritualist and Sweden’s most famous trance medium.

Born in Cleveland
to Turkish immigrants and raised a secular Muslim, Dr. Mehmet Cengiz
Oz is vice-chair and professor of surgery at Columbia University. Thanks
to his many appearances on The Oprah
Winfrey Show, and now
with his own Oprah-sponsored The Dr.
Oz Show, he has suddenly
become the nation’s most famous heart surgeon. Each year he performs
more than three hundred cardiac operations at New York-Presbyterian Hospital
in Manhattan. His speaking fee is $100,000. Author of hundreds of
technical papers and a series of YOU books—the most recent is YOU: Having a Baby—his admirers are now in the millions.

It
is not widely known that Oz has been profoundly influenced by Emanuel
Swedenborg, a Swedish Protestant fundamentalist who, late in life, became
a spiritualist and Sweden’s most famous trance medium. In the November/December
2007 issue of Spirituality
and Health, a glossy
bimonthly devoted to New Age topics, Oz coauthored an article titled
“Mehmet Oz Finds His Teacher,” about how his wife Lisa introduced
him to the theology of Swedenborg. (Lisa, by the way, is a Reiki Master.
Reiki is a Japanese form of alternative medicine developed by a Buddhist
monk.)

Once
greatly admired by thinkers as diverse as Emerson, Goethe, Blake, William
James’s father, and John Chapman—better known as Johnny Appleseed—Swedenborg
is now almost forgotten except for a small cult following. Here is a
thumbnail biography.

Emanuel
Swedenborg (1688–1772) was a respected Swedish scientist until middle
age, when Jesus appeared to him in a vision. The Lord persuaded him
to abandon science and devote the rest of his life to theology. After
Swedenborg’s death, his followers in England founded The Church of
the New Jerusalem based on his fifty or so books. Remnants of this church
still flourish in England and in the United States, where Swedenborgians
number an estimated 6,000.

Swedenborg
never doubted that every verse in the Bible was God inspired. His deviations
from orthodoxy resulted from endless trances that today would be called
OBEs (out-of-body experiences). Among his many books, the most popular
by far was Heaven
and Hell. Swedenborg
claimed to have visited both regions in his trances, where he supposedly
spoke with angels, devils, and spirits of the departed. His book contains
detailed descriptions of heaven and hell.

All
of Swedenborg’s books were written in Latin. A series titled Heavenly Secrets consists of eight volumes. Although
he never married, Conjugal
Love was a widely read
treatise. Another popular book, Apocalypse
Revealed, is a verse-by-verse
analysis of the Bible’s Book of Revelation.

Swedenborg’s
most worthless book, Life
on Other Worlds, contains—fasten
your seatbelt!—detailed accounts of his out-of-body travels to the
five then-known planets, the Moon, and five planets outside the solar
system. On each of these worlds he was able to chat with the human inhabitants
and the bodiless spirits of deceased humans who serve the inhabitants.
He also visited the heavens and hells of some worlds, where he spoke
with humans who became angels and humans evil enough to become demons.
Some of these trips “lasted a day,” he writes, “others a week,
and yet others for months.”

Swedenborg’s
first visit was to Mercury. Its spirits were able to invade his brain,
searching for facts and knowledge but having no interest in ideas or
opinions. The most notable spirit he meets is none other than Aristotle.
We are told he was a wise man in contrast to his many “foolish”
Earth followers.

The
human inhabitants of Mercury are slimmer than earthlings. Their women
have smaller faces. Their clothes are tight fitting. In spite of Mercury’s
nearness to the sun, its atmosphere shields the planet from the sun’s
heat, producing a climate “not too hot or too cold.”

Swedenborg
then visits Jupiter. Its land is called “fertile.” (Swedenborg
had no way of knowing that Jupiter has no
land.) Its inhabitants’
main concern is bringing up their children, whom they dearly love. They
are free of all evil impulses, such as stealing and greater crimes.
They know nothing of wars but are a “gentle and sweet” people who
live in a state of “blessedness” and “inner happiness.” Their
clothing is made of “bluish bark or cork.” When they sit down to
eat they do not use chairs or benches but instead sit on piles of fig
leaves. Their horses resemble ours, only smaller.

I was further
informed by the spirits from that world about various matters concerning
its inhabitants, such as their way of moving, and their food and houses.
When moving, they do not walk upright like the inhabitants of this and
many other worlds; nor do they go on all fours like animals, but when
they walk they help themselves with the flat of their hands, at every
other pace half rising to their feet. As they move, at every third pace
they turn their faces to one side and look behind them, making a slight
twist, quickly accomplished, of the body. This is because they think
it impolite to be seen by others except face to face.

I
spare the reader Swedenborg’s accounts of the inhabitants and spirits
on Mars and Saturn. Venus is more interesting because its humans are
of two kinds: one “gentle” and “humane,” the other
as fierce as wild animals. The two groups, along with their spirits,
live on opposite sides of Venus. Their heavens and hells are nearby.

Swedenborg
devotes only three pages to the spirits and inhabitants of the Moon.
The humans are small as dwarfs, but when they speak, their voices—
which come from their abdomens— roar like thunder. Swedenborg
assures us that the moons of other solar-system planets are also inhabited
by humans and their spirits, but he gives no details. His trip to our
moon is followed by visits to five planets in what he calls our “starry
sky,” far beyond our sun.

I
should add that the humans on our planets all worship Jesus, although
he was incarnated only on Earth. Swedenborg devotes a chapter to explaining
why Jesus chose our world as a place to live as a man and die for our
salvation. In other writings Swedenborg claims that the Lord’s Second
Coming, and the judgment of who is to be saved and who is not, actually
took place in our heaven in 1757. (He was convinced, by the way, that
faith in Jesus is insufficient for escaping hell. That faith must be
combined with charity, or good works.)

If
you are interested in reading Life
on Other Worlds, a paperback
translation titled Life
on Other Planets was
published in 2006 by the Swedenborg Foundation in West Chester,
Pennsylvania, and the Swedenborg Society in London. Copies are
readily available on the Internet.

The
book contains a lengthy introduction by Raymond Moody, author of many
books about NDEs (near death experiences) of persons whose hearts momentarily
stopped beating and who had visions of entering heaven, sometimes even
seeing Jesus. Moody believes NDEs are genuine out-of-body events similar
to Swedenborg’s trances. He strives mightily, without success, to
find something of lasting merit in Swedenborg’s crazy book.

Now
for Dr. Oz’s fascination with Swedenborg’s other, saner writings.

“When
Lisa and I got married,” he writes in Spirituality
and Health, “there
was no ’til death do us part in the ceremony.” Swedenborg had convinced
Oz and Lisa that marriages are intended to last forever in paradise.

“After
death the veil that separates the spiritual from the material world
is lifted,” Oz goes on, “and we continue in our true selves—either
as angels or evil spirits, depending on whether we have internally made
a heaven or hell for ourselves while living here.” Angels, as described
by Swedenborg, “are not a separate species, but people who are regenerate—literally
reborn humans.” This, of course, is contrary to what the Bible says
about angels and demons.

Swedenborgism,
Oz believes, is close to Buddhism. “Zen Master D.T. Sesuki,”
Oz writes, “once referred to Swedenborg as ‘the Buddha of
the North.’” A devout Christian, Swedenborg would have violently
disagreed.

The
number of alternative medicines that Oz favors is not known. He believes,
contrary to most doctors, that acupuncture really works, that its effect
on pain is more than a placebo. Acupuncture should always be supplemented,
says Oz, by what he calls the Dr. Oz Diet to lose weight. On an episode
of The Oprah
Winfrey Show Oz supervised
an acupuncture treatment for a pain in Oprah’s shoulder. Oprah said
she could hardly feel the needles and that the pain had vanished after
the treatment. In the April 2010 issue of O, Oprah’s magazine, Oz’s daughter
Daphne authored an article on “The Secrets of Acupuncture.”

It
is hard to believe, but Oz also recommends homeopathy! Homeopaths are
convinced that the more dilute a drug, the more potent it is. Accordingly,
they dilute their medications until only a few or no molecules remain.
Somehow, in a way totally unknown to science, the dilutant “remembers”
the missing molecules! Mainstream doctors like to tell of the homeopath
who forgot to take his daily pill and died of an overdose.

In
the November 2009 issue of O, Oz recommended homeopathy for
treating migraines. “Acupuncture and homeopathy are worth considering,”
he wrote, “as adjunct therapies once you are sure the headache is
not a sign of a serious
disorder.”

Ophthalmologists
all agree that eye refraction problems, such as near- and far-sightedness
and astigmatism, can be relieved only by corrective lenses or eye surgery.
Oz thinks otherwise; search Google for “Dr. Oz, eye exercises.”
Also search on Oz and acupuncture, homeopathy, remedies, and cancer.

Oz
is a fine cardiac surgeon. Unlike the Wizard of Oz, he is not a humbug,
but one should be wary of his far-out medical advice.

Martin Gardner

Martin Gardner is author of more than seventy books, most recently The Jinn from Hyperspace and When You Were a Tadpole and I was a Fish, and Other Speculations About This and That.

Content copyright CSI or the respective copyright holders. Do not redistribute without obtaining permission. Thanks to the ESO for the image of the Helix Nebula, also NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team for the image of NGC 3808B (ARP 87).